Space & Nanomaterials

Inter disciplinary research – Medical and chemical science graduate welcome

Fully funded for UK or EU students

Mission Discovery to find out how advances in science and technology could benefit from, and have value added through, experimentation in space. We are offering an out of this world fully-funded PhD opportunity, co-supervised with ISSET. Immediate start – thus first appropriately qualified candidate would be accepted for the position

Nanoparticles have novel and diverse applications in the area of medicine, the environment, process catalysts, renewable energy medicine, space exploration, and development of new smart materials. The synthesis of nanomaterials on earth is an ongoing and highly scrutinised activity. However, the influence of “Space” is virtually unknown. This interdisciplinary research challenge would aim to determine the factors that influence metallic silver, or gold and other nanocluster nanoparticle synthesis, their shape and polydispersity. The application of new bio reducing agents, surfactants and proteins that may result in formation of stable nanoparticles at room temperature would be investigated. Analysis would involve state of the art techniques such as TEM, spectroscopic ellipsometry, neutron reflectivity, SANS, AFM among others. A number of different “nano” materials can be utilised, thus there is scope for the researcher to explore novel opportunities. However our overall direction would be, after appropriate characterisation, to develop applications in the area of antimicrobial and biomedical science.

The candidate would develop feasible nanoparticle synthesis protocols and relevant experiments on Earth and reformat them to be performed in Space, International Space Station (ISS), with launch planned for summer of 2020. This would result in a unique opportunity to determine and compare the influence of nanoparticle synthesis in the Space environment.

Funding Notes
We are looking for enthusiastic and outstanding candidates with a degree relevant to this project, an excellent attitude to collaborative research, attention to detail, ability to withstand a fast learning curve, good communication skills and most importantly, creative enthusiasm. Creating a bridge from science on Earth to the ISS is achieved by so few people and with this fully-funded UWS PhD scholarship you could be one of them. The scholarship is available to students from the UK and EU. The studentship offers an annual stipend of £14,553 per annum for three years and payment of the tuition